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100 years after ‘The War to End All Wars’

By Bennie DiNardo Globe Staff,June 27, 2014, 8:18 p.m.
General John J. Pershing and Secretary of War Newton D. Baker reviewed the 18th Infantry in France during World War I.US Army Signal Corps via ASSOCIATED PRESS/file 1918

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by 19-year-old Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip was major news around the globe.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, walked to a car in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, minutes before they were assassinated.ASSOCIATED PRESS/file

European powers had been eyeing each other warily for decades, building warships and negotiating tangled alliances.

A London volunteer infantry regiment paraded through the streets of the city to encourage enlistment.ASSOCIATED PRESS/file 1914/Associated Press

The Globe, deep in the midst of covering the Great Salem Fire that left 20,000 people homeless, still made the assassination its lead story, ominously warning: “Should Austrian soldiers go to the aid of [Austria-Hungary], an international conflict of no small size would probably be threatened.”

The front page of The Boston Globe made the assassinations of the archduke and his wife the lead story.

That conflict was first called the European War, then the Great War, and later (with black optimism) “The War to End All Wars,” and it was indeed of no small size.

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The 98th Austro-Hungarian Infantry Regiment paraded in eastern Bohemia before leaving for the front at the beginning of the war.Associated Press/file 1914

Not until an even more horrific conflagration followed did it get its enduring label, World War I.

A gun crew with the US Army manned their weapons during the Allied offensive at Meuse-Argonne in France.Associated Press/file 1918/Associated Press

The war introduced suffering on a scale never seen before — 18 million dead, another 20 million wounded — as well as tanks, chemical weapons, aerial bombing, and post-traumatic stress (then known as “shell shock”).

The interior of the Cathedral at Verdun, France, was destroyed after a battle in 1917.Associated Press/file

Empires were destroyed, revolutions were sparked, and the seeds of World War II were sown in Germany’s defeat.

People gathered in the streets of Paris to celebrate the end of “The War to End All Wars.” Twenty-one years later, World War II broke out.ASSOCIATED PRESS/file 1918/Associated Press

Bennie DiNardo can be reached at bennie.dinardo@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bdinardo.

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